Bannerless (The Bannerless Saga 1)

He didn’t answer right away, and she didn’t know what that meant. Was the answer yes, but he didn’t want to talk about it? Or no, but he didn’t want to admit not leaping into such an obvious adventure? Was he preparing a story, some bardic tale for her?

“I got close, once,” he said finally, pointing toward the gray gash on the horizon. “Decided I was going to march straight in and see what I could see. But—there are people living there. Rough scavengers. I didn’t like the way they looked, so I turned back.”

“Did you think they’d hurt you?”

“Me, or the guitar. Either way, I didn’t go.”

The idea that he’d been scared seemed like a confession. She took his hand, sure that both of them were telling themselves stories about what the ruins were really like and about what kind of people could possibly be living there. Enid couldn’t imagine. Whoever they were, they never came to the Coast Road, and that said something about them.

She wanted to go there. Maybe not right now—she could almost feel Dak pulling away from that hulking ghost on the horizon. Not leaning toward it, as she was doing. Someday. On the way back. Which was when she realized that she wouldn’t do this forever—she’d go back to Haven someday. She didn’t know when, but that wasn’t important.

Oddly, the world seemed to open more, not less, knowing she had a place to go home to. It was an anchor in a safe harbor, no matter what happened. She was Enid of Haven.

“Let’s go, hmm? We should reach Firepit by dark,” he said, tugging on her hand until she followed.

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All this walking was productive, even if it wasn’t useful.

Enid developed a long swinging stride and toned muscles that may not have been strong but could keep going as long as she needed them to. She learned how to start fires in the rain, how to look for good sources of water, and how much time they had before a storm opened up on them judging by dark clouds on the horizon. She flinched at the particularly dark clouds, even years after that last big storm. In every town they stopped at, she looked for cellar doors. A place to shelter, to stay safe.

How much credit was all this worth, and how did she measure the experience? Could she ever use these skills, or was she being frivolous? Maybe she could be a courier, delivering messages up and down the Coast Road, dropping off packages, guiding travelers. Knowledge was a resource, and she could do a million things, learning what she was learning while traveling with Dak.

Funny thing was, Dak didn’t seem concerned about earning his keep or contributing to the community or any of it. “We’ll just see what happens,” he’d say, and, “I’m sure it’ll work out.” They’d show up at the next village or household, Enid would say she was from Haven, and people would smile and cluck over her. They all knew about Haven, the closest thing the Coast Road had to a center. Then Dak would slip his guitar out of its case and strum a few chords, and people would come to him like hens to seed. He was always right—he’d play, and people would feed him, exactly the sort of exchange their whole world was built on. That the music was intangible, impractical, didn’t seem to matter. Dak’s arrival was special, and folk could usually afford to trade a couple of apples and a meat pie for the novelty of it. Dak was almost always a better musician than the local variety who hadn’t been practicing every day of their lives.

Now and then they came to a household or settlement that couldn’t spare a couple of apples or anything at all. Enid learned to recognize them: the buildings were run-down, the gardens sparse. There might only be a single windmill. The people would look tired, and they didn’t smile at the sight of Dak’s guitar. A household or town might have a million reasons for not thriving—a couple of bad harvests, drought or disease, or bad management. After a couple of lean years, a place might turn around. Or it might break up, its members putting in for transfers to other settlements, scraping together credits to put toward starting over somewhere else. Asking for help. Didn’t happen often, but it did happen. Regional committees were there to make sure such folk were taken care of. No one ought to starve.

Even if all they could do was thank him, Dak stopped and played at these settlements anyway. “It’s what I do: I play and sing,” he said, suggesting this wasn’t how he made his living, that he could earn his keep some other way. But it was good he and Enid always carried some extra food in their packs.

One time, they encountered a turnoff and started down that path to see what households were there, but after only a mile or so, they saw a post with a sign nailed to it, driven into the middle of the road.

QUARANTINE.

The sign looked new, the wood freshly cut.

Enid stood staring at it for a long time, part of her desperately wanting to run ahead to see what was wrong, see if they needed food, if there was anything at all she could do to help. Did they have a medic? Should she go get one for them? Bring medicine? Was it flu or hemorrhagic fever or something else? She wanted so much to help. Dak gently touched her shoulder and urged her back. “Enid, come on. Sign’s there for a reason; we need to go.”

If the place needed help, they would have left a note asking for it. Enid searched and didn’t find one. So they were protecting travelers with the quarantine sign, and that was good. But she wanted to help.

“We’ll leave word at the next way station,” she said. “Pass the news on to the regional committee if they don’t already know. Right?”

“That’s right,” Dak said. “That’s a good idea. We should get going now.”

They walked on.

Sometimes, she and Dak would approach a place with that tired look, the air around it too silent—no clucking chickens, no loom beating a rhythm or blacksmith’s hammer clanging, no voices—and some instinct would tell them not to stop. They’d keep going on to the next place, or spend the night under the stars and talk about what the point of it all was, working to feed yourself and your friends if you were all just going to die in the end.

“Humanity’s made it this far,” Dak said on one of these nights. “Might as well keep going, yeah?” Enid thought of Auntie Kath, who might have had doubts about how far humanity had really come.

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Five weeks in, Enid saw the ocean for the first time. The real ocean, not a straight gray haze along the horizon as seen from the hills. Close enough to hear water shushing along the sand, splashing back in on itself. Dak knew a spot where an old town from before the Fall had just about finished rotting into sand and crabgrass, a dozen big storms over the last century pulling down buildings and dragging streets into the sea. All that lingered were some squares of concrete foundations, some rusted shells of cars, fallen poles, and symmetrical mounds of vegetation hiding whatever was underneath. The town had been there because of a beach, a slope of clean yellow sand stretching toward the water. The beach was still there, and they spent a night on it, having sex and laughing because the gritty sand got everywhere.

At sunset Enid rolled up her pants and waded into the surf, letting the chill waves crawl over her feet, like some living thing was tasting her skin. Little translucent crabs skittered out of the way of the water; ropes of brown kelp slumped onto shore. She dug her toes in the wet sand and found bits and pieces of broken shells, and also a couple of chunks of sea glass the size of her thumb, irregularly shaped. Pale green and creamy white, rubbed smooth and frosted by endless trips through the surf.

Not at all practical, but too beautiful and mysterious to leave behind. She tucked them in her satchel.

Half a day’s travel from the beach, they reached the first of the fishing villages. Enid thought the place was magnificent; community buildings and vario